Preface: this is not aimed at an academic audience. Mercifully those days are long gone.
Well – if “Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three…”
– Philip Larkin: Annus Mirabilis (1967)
Perhaps politics in music opens its account in 1804.
The year Ludwig van Beethoven completed his revolutionary Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (Eroica). As is well documented, Beethoven originally dedicated the symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, seeing him as the embodiment of republican ideals after the French Revolution. When Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, Beethoven ripped up the dedication.
This politicisation is reinforced by a dislocation from the past—of aristocratic patronage – redefined in terms of human struggle, ideals and even failure. What drives the musical narrative is itself a political story: the heroisms of the expansive first movement, with its disruptive twists and turns; a second movement funeral march perhaps depicting fallen, broken ideals; and the triumphant, blazing finale – a transformative reinvention.
It reminds me of Michael Tippett’s response to Beethoven’s Ninth – with a bit of Martin Luther King Jr. thrown into the mix—“What though the dream crack!/ We shall remake it…”
Dmitri Shostakovich’s works can certainly be described as “political” – indeed, dangerously so. His Symphony No. 5 – written one year after Stalin’s denunciation of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – may have restored his reputation as the foremost Soviet composer, but it is anti-Stalin to its core.
He uses classical form – but this is only a surface. Beneath it, the structure is undermined, corrupted by distortion. The conclusion may sound victorious, but it feels forced, coerced.
Another leap forward and we have Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975).
Rzewski created a huge architecture of musical invention – 36 variations –based on the Chilean protest song El pueblo unido jamás será vencido. If the song provides the political identity, the way Rzewski varies the theme provides the political experience.
From the very first variation, the theme disappears into the structure: it is dislocated, fragmented, distorted. When it finally re-emerges, it is the result of the struggle – a hard-won affirmation. It is both a physical as well as spiritual conclusion – a testament to the human spirit.
It is a masterpiece.
Two years later, Michael Finnissy wrote the iconic English Country-Tunes (1977).
The title could hardly be less helpful. It sounds pastoral, a homage to Ralph Vaughan Williams, perhaps. But no – it confronts the listener. It batters the notion of scones-with-cream-cheese decency, yet demands to be heard.
There are four large sections – a nod to tradition? I doubt it.
In the first section we are greeted by a wall of explosive energy. To be sure, there are moments of stillness, even tenderness – the opening of Midsummer Morn, for example – but these seem almost obliterated by the violent cluster assault that follows.
The second section – I’ll Give My Love a Garland and May and December – does indeed embrace a calmer energy. Here there is genuine tenderness, which I find moving.
If the second section could be said to reference a traditional slow movement, the third might be heard as a more boisterous, twisted scherzo, particularly in Lies and Marvels. The title The Seeds of Love may even conjure fleeting thoughts of Burt Bacharach’s The Look of Love – sung by Dusty Springfield – before a violent reality check undermines any suggestion of accepted romantic love.
Whatever the intent, it amplifies the poignancy of My Bony Boy.
The presto conclusion of Come Beat the Drums and Sound the Fifes is both raw and shocking. And yet – though it is a high-energy assault on the instrument itself – it also draws us into a shared space: not only of violence and disruption, but of tenderness, even love – felt from the margins, yet unmistakably universal.
This too is a masterpiece. Finnissy is one of our greatest living composers.
And finally, to the radical, political minimalism of Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union(1975).
At first glance, it does not seem to be a musical composition at all, in the traditional sense. It is (almost) entirely abstract: no melody, no fixed pitches – only rhythm. The players are not given notes, but boundaries: a range, a direction – and within that, they must choose for themselves.
The hint of political intent lies in Andriessen’s instruction that it be performed “for any loud-sounding group of instruments.” Already we have an ensemble with attitude.
The title Workers Union is a statement: there is no tradition here, no hierarchy. It is a collective – a collective of equals. Each player performs the same rhythm in unison, but chooses their own pitches within a predetermined range.
“Authority,” as some academic once put it, “is distributed, not imposed.”
To translate into normal parlance: there is no bloody conductor.
The effect of this loud, relentless driving music is not just musical energy.
It is industrial.
And if this music sounds abstract on the page, it isn’t in performance.
Late Music’s upcoming York St John Takeover Concert brings this world into the room – where Andriessen’s Workers Union is not an idea, but a physical, collective act.
For tickets and programme details, visit: York Late Music Concerts